I’ve heard a lot of talk and seen a lot of articles equivocating antifascists with fascists, or implying they are just as tyrannical or harmful. I think this is a false narrative and actively abets fascist movements by damaging some of their most effective opponents. But there are plenty of reasonable people who look askance at the people blockading and yelling at neo-nazi rallies or who feel intimidated by them, and these arguments may well be convincing to them. I feel this should be challenged.
Fascist movements are a useful tool for union-busting and breaking apart leftist movements, so no wonder a narrative enabling them is getting sponsored by the corporate media. I have no media platform, but I am not afraid of discussion with people who think antifascists are bad. I’m going to set out my case as clearly as I can and try to answer the most common arguments I’ve seen in the process.
It’s worth emphasizing at the start that the far right are an extremely violent movement. In 2016 they launched four times as many terror attacks in Europe as Islamists, mostly in countries where fascism has been allowed to grow into a significant political force. This figure does not include individual acts of violence or street harassment, which if you have any friends who wear a headscarf you’ll know are not uncommon.
So let’s make something very clear: Organized displays of fascism are people announcing their intention to perform a genocide. It is an imminent threat of violence. If you let the fascists take the streets, they prowl around beating the shit out of old ladies, kids waiting at bus stops, anyone who looks like they can’t fight back. I’ve seen it happen, there was a lot of it five or six years ago, when they were virtually unopposed.
Antifascists are a community defending themselves against this ideology – standing up for the rights that we do have, and should have in this country, against people whose stated goal is to take those rights away.
By showing up to oppose fascists, you prevent them being able to do that. The police have to contain them to preserve the peace, they have to be dispersed back where they came from and aren’t able to mingle and pose a threat to the public. This is the immediate goal of actions – the long term goal is to demoralize fascists and make it impossible for them to organize in polite company.
I believe free speech stops being a valid excuse when you start threatening people, a position that is (rightly IMHO) backed up in law. Most of the leaders of our modern fascist movement are smart enough to stop ten percent short of demanding that we burn every mosque in the country when there’s a camera nearby, but make no mistake, that is who they are, that is what they believe in and that’s what their followers will tell anyone who will listen.
The fascists do not believe in free speech. They do not believe in human rights, although they will use the principles of liberal society as a shield in order to build their movement until it has the power to take those rights away from everyone else. This is a conscious tactic; last week Richard Spencer laid it out in an interview, but of course people still fall for their shit again and again in quite a breathtaking way.
The more confident and powerful they get, the closer they are to achieving their goals, which is to use the power of the state to ethnically cleanse the UK, and destroy anyone who would try and stop them. There’s a big difference between that and whatever groups of people rock up to oppose their rallies.
In contrast, antifascists do not have a shared leadership or ideology beyond opposition to fascism; they encompass socialists, liberals, communists, anarchists and trade unionists, as well as representatives of the communities threatened by fascism. They use community organising to disrupt fascist gatherings, rather than state power.
I am fully in favour of disrupting a growing fascist movement by whatever means are most effective, and you should be too. Violence is a last resort in self-defense; antifascist actions are generally noisy but peaceful. I personally hate violence – my little group is up for stealing the flags and banners of fascists, which makes them feel bad. Great, they’re terrible people, maybe they will think twice before coming out next time. Fascism is an active and imminent threat to our community, you should join me in opposing it.
Often people ask me what the purpose is in masking up. Getting doxed by fascists is a real pain, and often the police are a danger to us also, so being anonymous makes attacks from snatch squads harder. This is a good question though, obviously black masks make people look intimidating to everyone, including the ordinary people we’re trying to protect, and masking up should be done judiciously.
In arguments against antifascist tactics, I frequently hear calls from centrists that the way to defeat fascists is to trounce their ideas in a public discussion. While picking apart their ideas is useful in the right context, I don’t think it’s worth engaging with them directly for a number of reasons, primarily because they aren’t going to argue in good faith in a public environment where genocide is frowned on, but also because liberals are terrible at answering critiques of the world they made and fascists know how to play them and end up looking reasonable in comparison.
But beyond that, the things you’re willing to debate reveal the things you view as negotiable, and what you don’t. I believe all human beings are inherently worthy of preservation. I’m willing of course to discuss how to defeat fascist movements, or answer criticisms of movements I’m a part of, but there’s some things that are off the table for me and one of them is whether you should be allowed to kill my friends and neighbours.
To put it bluntly, would you fancy debating with someone about whether they should be able to kill your mother and rape your daughter? No? I don’t blame you; even asking the question is gross and ridiculous. But if you’re up for a polite debate about whether vast swathes of your fellow humans don’t deserve to live, it says a lot about you.